"Online debit...why did it take so long?"
When I was asked this question earlier this month, it posed an interesting thought. With over 25 years of experience in direct marketing, I'd have to say that my recent endeavour has been the most rewarding. Namely, UseMyBank Services, Inc. Of course there have been many others, the fact is, none have been as exciting.

The assignment originally came to me through a previous assignment with a Credit Card processor in the US. It involved marketing a new online debit solution. My first thought was "this must have already been done". Upon investigation of the online payments industry, I quickly realized that there were absolutely no companies doing this in North America, in particular Canada.

All the alternative solutions to Credit Cards involved some complication or other. Either the Buyer had to sign up, or worse, they had to sign up, fund the account, and wait 2-5 days for the funds to clear. With UseMyBank.com, the funds are available right away, no waiting. How could I lose in promoting an online real-time debit based solution?

Just to give you a perspective on Canadians, Interac, which is the major Debit switch in Canada, did over 2.5 billion transactions last year. They had done a fantastic job of marketing to retailers in the brick and mortar world. The banks in Canada have over 8 million customers with online banking to view statements and pay bills.

From the onset, we did not have 100 million dollars to build a brand like Pay Pal, so our marketing strategy has been to find industry leaders in various vertical markets and prove the model of adding debit online to increase overall sales by up to 20% or more. This is a huge increase and demonstrates that sellers who accept credit cards only are missing out on a large part of their market. The analogy would be to go to your local supermarket's check out with cash or your debit card and find that they only accept Visa and MasterCard.

Retailers know how important it is to offer debit and my job is to educate online sellers/merchants that the virtual world is no different, the more ways to accept payments the better. A prime example is the Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation.

UseMyBank's Biller option provides Billers the ability to accept payments on their own website with their branding and confirm the payment instantly. By streamlining the process Billers will increase their adoption rates and save millions on processing paper transactions.

In summary, the most rewarding part about marketing UseMyBank.com has been the challenge of getting the word out in the most cost effective manner as possible. From a marketing perspective, it should be an easy sell. The reality is, most sellers do not even realize that there are alternatives to Credit Cards that can add to their bottom line. Once the sellers realize this, my job is done! And in most cases, the sellers are excited to see their volumes grow! It is just about to get a lot busier for us with our expansion into other markets such as the US and Internationally.

Brian Crozier, UseMyBank
VP Business Development

For further information;
Website: http://www.usemybank.com/
Email: info@usemybank.com
Phone: 416-727-3806